Shape of Fear Read Online Free PDF Page B

he’s been able to foresee trouble and help prevent it. From Chambrun’s point of view, that’s worth the money.” Eddie’s expression changed. He was looking past me into the Trapeze. “You’re about to be tapped for Skull and Bones,” he said.
    A hand rested lightly on my shoulder and I turned away from the bar to find myself facing Digger Sullivan. He had already dressed for the evening in a well-cut dinner jacket—and the black glasses were missing. I got my first look at a pair of wide, candid gray eyes. There was a kind of mocking humor in them that failed to hide some much deeper concern or hurt.
    “Buy you a drink?” he asked pleasantly.
    “It’s the right time of day,” I said, conscious that he was trying hard to read me.
    “Martini?” he asked, glancing at my glass on the bar.
    “Fine.”
    “Send them over to a table, please,” he said to Eddie.
    He led the way to a table fairly close to the entrance and we sat down. A waiter brought the martinis. Another passed a tray of hot canapés. When we were alone, Sullivan didn’t beat around the bush.
    “How much do you know about me?” he asked.
    “I just finished reading a batch of clippings on some trouble of yours,” I said.
    “Then you’ve asked yourself why Chambrun didn’t call the police or at least insist on my checking out of this glittering bird cage.”
    “Yes.”
    “Perhaps you asked him?”
    “No.”
    “You accepted his judgment without questions?”
    “He’s the boss,” I said.
    “I’ll be damned,” he said. “Then you don’t know why?”
    “No.”
    “Come, Mr. Haskell, give!” he said, the white smile failing to disguise the anxiety in his eyes.
    “Nothing to give,” I said. “Here at the Beaumont we accept Mr. Chambrun’s decisions without quibbles.”
    He was a chain smoker, and he put out one cigarette and lit another. “It beats me,” he said. “I suppose I’m being specially watched?”
    “I have no idea,” I said. I tried to relax him. “If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you, but actually I don’t know.”
    He hunched his shoulders as though he was fighting an actual physical tremor. “Place seems to be all eyes,” he said.
    I knew what he meant. He wasn’t talking about the many customers who had drifted into the Trapeze, most of them dressed for the evening. The Trapeze was a way station before they went on to a private party somewhere or to one of the hotel dining areas. Right now the Trapeze was doing a rushing business, Mr. Del Greco, and an assistant captain moving among the tables taking orders. The customers here were, by-and-large, not the new rich. As a whole they were totally unself-conscious. The women were expensively put together, dressed, jeweled. There were more different hair colors than God had ever invented. But these people were not displaying themselves to a gawking public. This was their room, not open to autograph hunters or glamor-struck adolescents. There was a curious blankness to their faces. Eyes rested on Sullivan and me, wondered about us and passed on without changing expression. Not one of those social masks had a crack in them.
    They weren’t the eyes Sullivan had referred to.
    The eyes he felt were on him belonged to the captains, the waiters, the bartenders, the man at the far end of the bar who might well be part of the security staff—but who wasn’t to my knowledge. Still, he could be. But beyond this, I’d always had the feeling that somewhere—in the ceiling, perhaps—was a master peephole through which Chambrun watched and watched and knew everything about his world.
    “Part of what makes the Beaumont what it is,” I told Sullivan, “is the ability of the staff to anticipate everyone’s needs.” With coincidental perfect timing a waiter held a match for Sullivan’s cigarette. I grinned at him. “See what I mean?”
    He didn’t answer. He seemed to have frozen where he was sitting, his gray eyes fixed on the entrance. He looked like a man braced